Smartphone users’ satisfaction and regional aspects: Factors that emerge from online reviews

Abstract

This study aims to analyze which factors related to smartphone users’ satisfaction emerge from online reviews. In addition, as the study was conducted in Brazil which is a developing country with a lot of regional diversity, a secondary aim of this study is to test whether regional aspects can affect users’ satisfaction level. Online reviews were analyzed through the Content Analysis technique. Next, we carried out a quantitative analysis using Ordinal Logistic Regression. The results showed that smartphones’ features related to hardware and software and sellers’ characteristics may significantly affect users’ satisfaction. The socioeconomic factor, represented by the GDP per capita of the cities where users live, had a significant and negative impact, indicating that users in more economically developed regions attribute lower satisfaction level to smartphones. This study contributes to the literature as it used online reviews as data source, which helps identifying factors related to users’ satisfaction beyond those analyzed in previous studies that applied questionnaires.